


Truths before a fossil shell

by faceofstone



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Auron & Braska & Jecht - Freeform, Auron & Tidus - Freeform, Bonding, Gen, Missing Scene, Worldbuilding, post Zanarkand, shared memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26064931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: Fake it till you make it: the cardinal rule of summoners and guardians alike, until all pretenses are laid bare. After Yunalesca’s demise, all eyes are on Auron.
Relationships: Auron & Yuna (Final Fantasy X & X-2)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18
Collections: Press Start VI





	Truths before a fossil shell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DuelCast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuelCast/gifts).



1.

How does Spira build a history of dis-belief? Its seeds were planted ten, a hundred and thirty, four hundred and twenty-three, six hundred years ago, but it begins like this: the summoner Yuna walks out of the Zanarkand cloister carrying her head high. Her guardians follow, each of them grappling with the blasphemy on their hands, defining it for themselves as a stain, a right, a weight, a beacon.

Auron mounts the rear guard like an afterthought. He bends down in the rubble made of ten-centuries-old carvings and the debris that each high tide has cast upon it since. The glistening of a broken shell has caught his attention and fills his head now that all intellect has escaped it, refusing to give form and words to Yunalesca’s death, burdens lifted, the limits of revenge, terrifying glimpses of true hope. There is only a deep, unearthly rumbling filling him from ear to ear. He pockets the shell, tracing its shape with his rough thumb. Absent coherent thoughts, this gesture, repeated over and over with the tenacity of a mantra, will have to do to ground him in the present: after all, it holds within it the entire history of Spira. Auron finds on the shell’s markings all the paths that lead to Zanarkand, that the men and women of this land have followed since the beginning of this age, that Auron himself has crossed thrice on foot and once more as a dream, the same spiral, always the same spiral time after time and now no more. No-one will follow. The tip is broken. His fingers linger on the jagged edges. A thousand years of fossilized cycles shatter around him with the pained shrieking of pyreflies and at long last mold themselves into something new, still bright, still fluid.

A deep shadow is cast over their group and only now does Auron realize that the scream in his head is not of his own making but has been filling the whole width of the sky: Sin lies before them and reality cries out in its unholy presence. The air is wrong. The discordant wailing of pyreflies crashes against their ears like a dirge.

 _Hello, old friend_ , Auron whispers, almost choking on buried emotions as his own pyreflies feel the pull, but Sin’s attention is not on him, it does not care for seven mortals on a forlorn shore. If Spira’s bane has any humanity, it is spared for Tidus, who looks up with a haunted glimpse of understanding, but it is not here for him either, this much is clear to all of them. Zanarkand cries out for Yunalesca and Sin cries too, and all the sky with it, for reasons they cannot yet fathom. New traces, new reasons, new connections. They are on a path.

Yuna emerges from a depression in the cracked ground under their feet and climbs a fallen column, balancing herself with her staff. She looks South, toward Bevelle, with a distant gleam in her eyes. Dawn burns beyond her.

As if to answer her call, Cid’s airship appears in the sky to lift her and let her shine over a new era.

Auron follows. It is, as always, all he knows how to do.

2.

Between the Al-bhed refugees and the summoner’s retinue, the airship is noisy, lively and packed like a can of quus, yet Auron, by virtue of his legendary rank, has been afforded private lodgings. He has not complained nor certainly conceded a point to politeness and tried to refuse. Dangling on his hammock in relative silence, accompanied only by the comforting roar of the engines, it may just be the first time he has felt grateful for his title.

“Apologies,” comes Yuna’s voice from outside his cabin. His summoner does not wait for an answer before walking in. He watches her regard him with a light bow and she is wondrous and steady as steel, which is not what Braska, who favored softness, would have wanted for her, he would not have wanted any of this for her, but then he should have read the signs when she was seven years old, or given her a better example, or both. Summoner kin follows suit, as the saying goes.

“Sir Auron,” she says. “It is part of my role as a summoner to take upon me the hopes and aspirations of the people of Spira, see to them, tend to them. In this role, then, I ask you: what in Bahamut’s name was _that_.”

“Growing short on holy figures to swear by, aren’t we.”

“Please. Answer my question.”

“If I had told you the truth, would that have stopped you from coming?” he repeats, gauging from beyond his dark glasses her reaction to the same words he told them in Zanarkand, the same words he told himself a thousand times before then. This answer is not a lie. In Zanarkand, and a thousand times in the mirror before then, it helped stem the tide so that his actions, and the reasons for his actions, were left alone until a time of reckoning. In truth he would not mind drowning now. It has been a long time coming.

“I see. What you say is true, but… that was before… the real choice. The lack of a final Aeon is not the foundation upon which Yevon’s lies are built. The creation of it is. And you knew… about this sacrifice. I do not mean disrespect to the memories the pyreflies showed us. But I need to know.”

“I had you right where I wanted you. You did well, all of you.”

She is still so young, so much younger than any of them when they first left. He puts up an armor of confidence so thick it fills the room and it would be easy for her to bow and leave, but she stands her ground like she stood her ground against the very founder of her faith. Yuna grabs her summoner’s staff and softly plants it on the floor: she will see this through to the end.

“I have to wonder, sir Auron. It was Tidus who stopped Lulu – you were silent then. Would you have spoken out, if he had not? At what point?”

“And who brought Tidus into the group?”

“No, wait, that is now how… my father, he admired how you always said what you meant. There was courage in that honesty, he said. I looked up to those stories. And I will not be led to believe that he was wrong in this. But now this, all of this, it is a pretense. It is not what you meant.”

Auron nods.

“That’s life, kid. It is called being an adult,” he says. There’s a burst of pride and tenderness for the girl in front of him; he keeps it in check, given how she is doing a pretty good job of seeing right through him even without him rolling over and leaving himself wide open. “With the job you picked, you must’ve learned something yourself about not showing your weaknesses. Chin up, roll your shoulders and you’re good to go. I’ve got some fifteen years of experience on you. That’s all.”

“Ah, but, sir Auron. You do not have eyes behind your back.”

“Neither does my lady summoner.”

“Wrong! I have ten.”

The math is simple enough: it should be eleven, but she cannot count on him now. Five guardians she trusts with her life, plus a sudden enigma who never washed her father’s blood from his hands and was about to add hers to the count.

Auron doesn’t take it personally – precious few attitudes can hurt the dead. It is good that she is still looking beyond roles and titles in the world around her. It builds character.

“Wakka saw you,” she says, “back in Zanarkand, before we boarded the ship. You looked so, so lost.”

“We all did.”

“Yes. All of us, what plans we may have had, they were pulled from under our feet and we were thrown into this strange present. So I ask you, what was yours?”

He says what he can, then: that he could not be certain that they would rebel and he could not be certain that their strengths combined would allow them to prevail where he alone had failed. For that matter, he still can’t, the fight is not over yet and hopes and gambits piling up do not a result make. Certainties were a luxury reserved for the followers of Yevon, comfortably toiling in their beaten path; Auron, Jecht, Yuna’s father, her mother, Yuna herself had all lost that privilege sooner or later. She nods at his words. It feels at last like they are sitting on the same bank of a very wide river, looking at the sky, seeing the same shapes in the clouds.

All the same, he continues, he could not, would not substitute Yevon’s dogmas with his own, so the only way he could envision was to let them see with their own eyes and make their own decisions. In the end, the plan worked. Imagine that.

There is another history, and they are both seeing it so clearly, in which Tidus does not speak up, because everyone’s words deviate in the slightest and don’t give him that easy turn under the spotlight, maybe Rikku holds her peace as well, windows of opportunity close around them, the air is ever so heavy under the pyreflies’ cold glow. In that story, would Yuna have walked away from Yevon’s lies? Would Auron have shown her the way? The answers hang in the air between them.

3.

The young summoner stands in front of her guardian. Her iron grip on her staff loosens and she lets it fall to the ground.

“Give me your hands. Please.”

From his spot in his hammock, Auron looks up at her and sees himself, lost and ablaze in Braska’s light, except she is still standing, except she did change the world. The kids are alright. He likes their story better. He duly raises his hands and offers her his palms.

“That’s good,” Yuna continues. “Thank you. As I said, it is my role as a summoner to embrace the troubles of the people of Spira and Yunalesca will not take this away from me. I also… need to know… that what you chose to hide from us will not jeopardize our journey moving forward. It is a lot to ask, but I cannot afford to not… trust my guardians. If you will allow me… I trust you are familiar with the rite of kinship? Ever since I was introduced to it by the temple priests, I have taken comfort in imagining that my father must have been generous in performing it. His presence alone brought such comfort...”

“A light Sending,” Auron fills in, having been around enough priests in his youth to be familiar with the repertoire. He remembers eager trainees practicing with it to get ready for the real deal, then soon being too worn out by the dead to care for the living. “Naughty pyreflies go out.”

“Sir Auron!” Yuna laughs. “That is not how the Temples prescribe it be introduced!”

“Thank you,” he replies. “You will vouch for my daily blasphemy quota, then? I wouldn’t want to fall behind.”

Torn between reprimanding him for this profanity, as well as all those he must have thought but not voiced throughout their pilgrimage, and asking where one can apply for a blasphemy quota of her own, Yuna only manages an undignified fit of giggles as she places her hands over his and lets herself settle in the comfort of the rite. Half guided meditation, half joining of minds, it is, indeed, a lighter form of the Sending, for the pyreflies of the dead are wild and unbridled, and tinged with regrets and unspeakable pain, but among the living, even the harsher emotions are shackled by crude matter. A capable mage knows how to reach through the matrix of skin, blood and bone to find these fiery imbalances and nurse them, guiding the excesses away from the body to the benefit of patient and physician both.

This matrix is not what she finds in her mind’s eye. When she sees herself standing on still waters, one and the same as the infinite air above her and as the infinite the sea below her, Spira’s one soul split in two, and looks down to see Auron in her reflection, the winds of the Farplane stir the surface and cold dead waters call for her underneath.

Yuna opens her eyes, cold sweat dotting her skin. Auron is tired of his little secret and is content with staring at her with his one good eye, with the calm composure of the warriors of the stories of old, the ones who were defeated and had to pick up the pieces of the aftermath. _Surely this does not really come as news_ , he seems to ask. _You knew me through tales. Do I look like the type to go on with my life when Braska was made to give up his?_

She shakes her head. Not really news, no.

“Do you want me to continue?” she asks in a whisper, weighing the impact of her choice again – did she have the right to ask this of him? As her heart couldn’t stay still in her chest after Zanarkand and she went through those events over and over in her memory, she felt so betrayed by his coyness and by all the world around her that she started to fear that every wall would hide more treason. So she has gone for the one sure-fire method she knew. And the first thing she has learned is too much already.

He only really knew her through tales, too, and welcomes the occasion to build a bridge between them, however too little and too late. Holding her at arm’s length was easy with their mutual social standing, their big noisy group, the loss they shared, the one that loomed ahead. He dreaded the thought of leading to the Calm Lands not only the vague idea of Braska’s daughter, but Yuna, the girl from Besaid, with her own voice and hopes and loves, carrying the dream of a final summoning within her. Now that they both stand at the end of history, he regrets the missed opportunities. It is comforting to know that someone will remember at least a sliver of him, after all is said and done.

“...sure.”

A capable summoner knows her way around the dead. In her mind, she is back on water, surrounded by the dream of all of Spira, and the ocean cries like the Farplane. She takes a deep breath and gets to work. It’s a dance, it’s a weave, it’s a beacon for someone whom she would like to call a friend. Which makes it tricky, because Spira’s suffering has touched her so many times and the temple priests have taught her to live alongside it and keep walking on her path, but she has never reached out to someone whose aches have carved a ridge so close to hers, someone who shares the same horizon of loss.

A memory bubbles up, tender but hurting like an open wound. Braska sits on the steps of Bevelle, bright against the setting sun. The world feels boundless from atop the Great Bridge, but they both knew that the horizon will be closing in on them soon enough, pilgrimages barely last the space of a dream. Auron is high strung, his summoner points out. He always did like to state the obvious. What is the point of a healer if he is not allowed to help, he says, and offers him his hands, like Yuna imagined. The ritual soothes him. For a moment. It feels like taking the water out of the sea a bucketful at a time, they could go on and on but the tide crashes on Auron again and the sea is as deep as it ever was, Braska cannot be source and cure at once.

Outside their shared dream, Yuna feels a tear roll down her cheek; she was not ready to almost feel her father’s touch again. This wound will not heal for them both. Auron feels her lean on his hands and with unpracticed tenderness helps her sit down next to him without breaking the connection, and they can move on, together, for now.

The days of his first pilgrimage remain folded over themselves in a tight, unbreachable layer molten by heat and pressure. At the other end of it, there is a lower emotion that lingers with the levity and aimlessness of of a mantle of pyreflies. All he has done ‘since’ (since Jecht’s sacrifice, since Braska’s death, since his own for that matter: all the fringes of that dense crust) was dictated by his companions’ requests. Watch over Tidus. Give Yuna a good life. That was all. When Sin crashed into Zanarkand, his aim was clear in Auron’s eyes: to give Tidus a shot at a life in the outside world, the real world, maybe meet Yuna, live the life they could not. Did Jecht know that Yuna was communing with Valefor’s dream then and would be leaving soon, new martyr to follow in their footsteps? Auron did not. The news reached him outside Luca and clawed at him like a fiend. So he offered her his service, and Tidus’s as well, because what else was there for him to do? He would watch over Jecht’s boy, and make sure Braska’s girl would have the best life she could, within Spira’s boundaries, that is, not much, or for not long. If anyone has a plan, that is Jecht from deep within Sin’s mutated dreams, not Auron, who is no mastermind and no leader either – at best, he can flaunt a certain knack for choosing whom to follow.

Where there is a gathering of pyreflies, death lies underneath. _If you will_ , prods Yuna, and Auron pushes those previous emotions away to shed a light on the bare ground. What they find is so very simple: Spira’s spiral of death is so much bigger than a monk from Bevelle. He wanted to change the world, too. But he changed nothing. That is his story, burned in every muscle of his body: when Braska and Jecht fell, Auron lost his rights to hope for a better future. He has walked the path to Zanarkand again and again, berating himself for even wishing that the story could turn out better this time.

He said nothing to Yuna or Tidus because the sky of a thousand years hung too heavy over them all.

This is the bottom of his shame. He has nothing more to offer but his loyalty and his sword, to see it through to the end.

Through the ties of the rite and through the bounds that connect them all, Yuna embraces these thoughts with no pity nor judgement, takes great care not to think about the words _naughty pyreflies go out_ else her concentration end up needing a Sending of its own, and frees them from their shackles. She offers them back to Auron and they are still shameful and they are still true, but they glow with an ember of hope and that makes them bearable.

“We both miss him, huh?”

The airship cuts through the sky, shattering a thousand years of sedimented resignation. Yuna and Auron stare at the distant clouds. They can sit in silence for a while.

4.

“Hey, old man?”

Night has fallen over Spira. Yuna is long gone, to attend to her duties and spend time with the living. Auron has barely moved. This is a day for surprises, he muses, since he would not have pegged Tidus, out of their whole colorful group, for the type to knock on a door and wait for an answer.

“Come in,” Auron says after a while.

When the kid walks in, he’s a little out there, a little spacey. Thinking was never his forte; the strain is evident.

“So, I was talking it over with Rikku...” he says with a frown. He bites his lip, realizing that he should probably explain what the whole thing is about, but Auron invites him with a flick of his hand to get on with it: the day’s events are on everyone’s mind, no need to explain.

“Were you counting on me to offer myself? For the sacrifice?”

What can Auron say – _he was not counting on him not to, but_ _he could not be happier that_ _he didn’t_ , is the core of the issue, but there is no-one on that airship that night with enough fortitude left to disentangle a quadruple negative, himself included. He considers how to better explain himself. It’s that kind of day, at long last.

“You really thought I would’ve been capable of it?” Tidus asks again before Auron can speak. “I just wanted to say… thanks, man. Means a lot.”

Tidus gives him an uncertain thumbs up and leaves again, as dreamlike as he had walked in.

He hears him mutter from outside the door, as comfort, as a way of unwinding and letting go of the breath stuck in his lungs, even, unknown to him, as a distant echo: “I’ll think of something.”


End file.
